2009.04.15

Indonesian Fruit 'Salad', Two Ways

'If it ain't cooked and you can't peel it, don't eat it' is a mantra for many travelers determined to keep stomach bugs at bay. It's one I just can't subscribe to here in Southeast Asia, where most of the time temperatures hover around scorching and rolling carts packed with peeled fresh fruit beckon from many a corner.

Last Saturday we found ourselves in front of this Jakarta vendor ordering up some rujak, a fruit and vegetable salad that assumes a number of forms in Indonesia, Malaysia (where it's called rojak), and Singapore.

We love the simplicity of this Javanese rujak: watermelon, jicama, buah kedondong (a small oval, green-skinned fruit with a spiky pit that's intensely sour, also known as ambarella), ripe papaya, and rose apple sliced onto a plate, sprinkled - if you wish (we didn't) - with a sourish powder,

and accompanied by a small mound of chopped fresh chilies mixed with white sugar and salt and a dab of sticky sauce consisting of little more than gula merah (palm sugar) pounded in a mortar with chilies. Of course we took an immediate shine to the gula concoction; its slight smokiness and heat married seamlessly with the light, juicy, sweet-and-sour fruit.

Perhaps even better - certainly more intriguing - was the rujak tumbuk ('pounded' rujak, above) that we sampled the day before, prepared by a vendor from Jogjakarta who carries his business in two wooden boxes suspended from either end of a shouler pole.

'That is very, very old,' said an observer, his voice heavy with awe, as he pointed to the worn - but lovely, with its orange and green paint job - mortar in which our order of rujak would be tumbuk'd.

Into the mortar went the base: salt, crumbled trassi (dried shrimp paste), and chilies. Tumbuk, tumbuk, tumbuk. Then the fruit and vegetables: kedondong and jicama, green mango, rose apple, and lobi-lobi, a red cherry-lookalike that's crunchy, juicy, and sweet-sour (it's also preserved and served, with ice and sugar syrup, as a drink).

After pounding the ingredients almost to a pulp the vendor pulled out a chunk of palm sugar and shaved a piece into the mortar. More tumbuk, tumbuk, tumbuk, and then he spooned the mash into a plastic tray.

All that pounding had released the juices of the fruit and vegetables to create a fair amount of 'sauce' that was salty, sweet, spicy, and fragrant with the slightly heady funk of shrimp paste, and had a little bit of 'body' courtesy of the starch from the sweet potato. It made for a fantastically refreshing few mouthfuls.

A few years ago in Padang we savored a rujak made with a similar mixture of fruit and vegetables but served with a fiery peanut sauce.

We can't wait to return to Indonesia and see what else the islands do with fruit salad.

Since you've been in Asia for a long time and have tried quite a bit of street food, I reckon that you now have an "iron stomach". I wish I still had that. This N.American living has weakend my stomach...

Mm, looks fantastic! I love the Southeast Asian combination of salty and spicy with fresh fruit-- from simple green mango dipped in chili sugar, to the salty and spicy fruit som tums. Would love to try this dish at well.

And well observed on the Malay origins of the word Piesang! That's what a banana is called in Afrikaans, showing some Southeast Asian origins to South African culture. There will be more on Piesang revealed soon.... -X

Kelantan Girl - that may be true (about the stomach). But I think we are also careful at the same time as being adventurous. I have seen street stalls I would not eat at. Then again, I have eaten from street vendors that I first wondered about eating from, so who knows!

Souffle - yes, we saw those everywhere and actually had one without the ice cream. Next time we'll go all the way with it.

Xander - just grind up some of the palm sugar you pictured in a recent post with some fresh chilies, slice up some fruit, and you're good to go!